Taiwan Loses Two Defense Ministers in a Single Week

Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense is suffering heavy casualties with nary a missile fired from across the strait.

The island has been forced to name its second new defense minister in a week following the resignation of newly installed ministry head Andrew Yang on Tuesday after only six days in the office. The latest in a throng of disgraced ex-officials that have left President Ma Ying-jeou’s team in recent years, Mr. Yang stepped down after confessing to plagiarism and is being replaced by Chief of the General Staff Yen Ming.

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This file photo taken on August 1, 2013 shows Taiwan’s then- newly appointed defence minister, Andrew Yang, listening as he is questioned by lawmakers in parliament in Taipei. Taiwan’s scholar-turned defence minister resigned late on August 6, 2013 after he was accused of plagiarism, less than a week after taking office to replace his predecessor who also stepped down.

At an unscheduled press conference Tuesday night, the 58-year old Mr. Yang, a scholar-turned-military-man, admitted that a paper he published in 2007 contained plagiarized passages. “This article was ghost written by a friend, who was also a colleague…Part of the paper was indeed plagiarized from a Chinese publication which was written by a foreign scholar,” he said.

Mr. Ma approved the resignation earlier on Tuesday. He had hand-picked Mr. Yang to fill the position after the previous defense minister, Kao Hua-chu, stepped down on July 31 following the death last month of a conscript due to excessive punishment ordered by his superiors. A protest over the death drew more than 110,000 over the weekend.

Mr. Yang’s sudden departure comes at a bad time for the ministry, which was already in disarray due to a string of recent scandals. It also represents yet another blow to Mr. Ma, who lost his finance minister two weeks into his second term and watched his cabinet secretary get hauled away in handcuffs in December.

According to opposition Democratic Progressive Party lawmaker Kuan Bi-ling, at least two-third of Mr. Yang’s paper, which appeared in book titled “Ready for the D-Day,” was copied verbatim from a work by U.S. military expert Richard Fisher. “This is my personal mistake. I must apologize and shoulder the responsibility to protect the honor of the military and the government,” said the ex-minister, saying he hoped his resignation would win back public support for Taiwan’s military.

The swiftness and the timing of Mr. Yang’s departure has given rise to conspiracy theories suggesting he was sabotaged by conservatives within the military who didn’t want a civilian minister. At a news conference on Wednesday, the ministry denied that his resignation had anything to do with conflict inside the military

“The president has direct jurisdiction over Taiwan’s defense. The fact that Yang has to stepped down only after a few days, means the president didn’t follow the most basic standardized procedure of properly vetting his candidates,” said Ker Chien-ming, caucus whip for the Democratic People’s Party (in Chinese).

The president has not made any public comment regarding Mr. Yang’s resignation.

Instability in the ministry is the last thing Taiwan’s military needs as it struggles to recruit new soldiers. As of July 3, less than 2,000 people had signed up for the island’s new all-volunteer draft system, a far cry from the government’s target of 17,447 this year.

Ties between Beijing and Taipei have improved since Mr. Ma entered the office, though Beijing continues to describe Taiwan as a renegade province, and says its goal is to reclaim the island, by force if necessary.

Mr. Yang is an amiable personality celebrated for his diplomatic skills. Fluent in English, he represented the president on several overseas trips and was the key negotiator with the U.S. on arms sales to Taiwan. Yet he has also been criticized for being soft, including when he publicly apologized at last weekend’s massive protests.

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